The replacement phone. The cause of these 5 Photo Explosion posts. Blame the new phone!

In total there were 715 photos taken on my old phone, in 9 months. That is over 79 photos a month. Pretty extreme snapping. Hopefully there will be more weird and wonderful on my new phone. Stay tuned for my next phone upgrade in two years time to find out!

I hope this series hasn’t been too much torture!

Innit, like? Not sure I want to order it if you aren’t sure yourselves…

It is all fun and games until one jackass puts a hotel on Mayfair...

It is a good philosophy. Stick to the first two things and most men will be happy

And finally…

A CAN OF COKE. YES!

Can't remember what this is called, but it is in Sale. I think I checked into it on Foursquare, I will have to look back throuhg my checkins. It is in a park though.

This is genuinly how BT wired my phone sockets. To each other and not to the main line. And they thought I was crazy when I said it didn't work.

A common sight for my car. Bonnet up. I might as well just drive it like this permanently. Probably illegal though...

Moving out of my old flat. One of the final photos. It looks so bare!

Stockport with the sun setting. On the train back from the south somewhere. I am so a budding photographer!

Alas, we are not at the end of the Photo Explosion journey yet. Stay tuned for part 4! MWUAHAHAHA!

Probably not the exact plane they will be using.

I am writing this post at midnight on 18th September. I can see into the future though. This is a completely random post. At the time that this post is released into the world of the interweb I will be driving from The Wirral (where I am staying at my parents this weekend) to Manchester Airport to drop them off for their holiday to Malta. (Very fancy, I know. I didn’t get an invite!)

3am is not the ideal time to be driving when you are planning to be in work at 8am, so I have devised a plan of going to bed super early the night before. I will probably be in bed by 10pm… Before MOTD2 starts! (Don’t worry, it is being recorded on my Sky+ in Manchester, all bases covered here). That gives me 4.5 hours sleep (ish) before I have to get up and drive to Manchester Airport. If I can be in my bed back in Manchester by 4am, I should be able to squeeze in another 2.5 – 3 hours taking my total up to 6.5 to 7 hours. That is like the same as what I normally get. I can guarantee I will still be grumpy when I turn up for work on Monday morning though. Even if I have a lie in and turn up for work at 10 I can guarantee that! I think my best bet is to get into work early as usual, and restore my sleep pattern the next night, instead of shifting my time at work by a couple of hours. That will probably throw me off whack even more!

Which reminds me, have to ask for the afternoon off work next week to pick them back up from the airport and take them back to the Wirral. If I forget, they could be waiting for quite a while!

I wonder how loud I can get away with playing my music on the journey? No doubt they will want it nice and low. If I use the excuse that it will keep me awake, they can’t complain right? Muse demands to be played loud dammit!

I have some air dates for US based shows appearing in the UK. I don’t watch them all, but hey, it is useful to impart wisdom. Right?

Two and a Half Men S9 – Comedy Central HD – 20/09 @ 9pm. (They are apparently only showing the first episode, where Charlie Sheen is replaced by Ashton Kutcher (spoiler alert much?). Longer wait for the rest…)

Glee S3 – Sky1 HD –22/09 @ 9pm (This has popped up on the Sky TV Guide. And so the tormet begins again!)

The Middle S3 – Sky1 HD – 23/09 @ 7pm (A show I want, starting back on Friday with Modern Family (Another great show) and An Idiot Aboard (Meh). Seems to be a solid Friday lineup from Sky. This and Modern Family will probably try and follow the US airdates)

Modern Family S3 – Sky1 HD – 23/09 @ 8pm (See The Middle)

An Idiot Abroad S2 – Sky1HD  – 23/09 @ 9pm (See The Middle)

NCIS:LA S3 – Sky1 HD – 25/09 @ 10pm (Another I don’t watch, but it is popular, so I am including it)

Rules Of Engagement S1 – E4 HD – 26/09 @ 4.30pm (A new show that I admit I an intrigued about. Might be worth a watch)

Fringe S4 – Sky1 HD – 28/09 @ 10pm (Got this from GeekTown @ http://www.geektown.co.uk/uk-air-dates/ , not confirmed elsewhere though. Quite a few of these, and more, are over at GeekTown, probably worth checking out! Long page though, could do with having some of the comments taken off to help the page out!)

House S8 – Sky1 HD –06/10 @ 10pm (House is back! Not sure on the date, courtesy of GeekTown again!)

Criminal Minds S7 - Sky Living HD – 07/10 @ 9pm (I am happy if this one is true, Criminal Minds coming back sonner than expected! Bring it on! Again, GeekTown)

GeekTown is getting bookmarked, that is for sure!

Let the photos commence!

Part of the fuse box in my car. You know, just because... (There were diagnostic reasons for taking this photo, but its much better posted here completely out of context)

The car with eyelashes. Actual Eyelashes. WHAAAAAT?

My Laptop playing Minecraft on my TV in full 1080p. That is the dream, surely?

Bob, my parent's cat posing on a stool. Such a poser...

Stay tuned for part 2! (I just want to cut down on the loading times for each post, theres quite a few images!)

Still brilliant.

So I got a phone call from Vodafone, they wanted to tie me into another contract. I figured I wasn’t going to go down without a fight.

The phone call triggered something in my brain. A need for a new phone. The urge for a new gadget. My mind was set. I was hitting the interweb and looking at phones. Previously I had opted for a 12 month Sim only contract. I bought myself a HTC Desire Z and used that as my phone. It is a great phone by the way. It did everything I wanted it to. There was just one thing that bugged me, and that was the keyboard. If you have been a long term reader, you will remember when I got the phone that I bought this particular one so I had a keyboard. Turns out I have used the keyboard maybe 5 – 6 times since I got it in December 2010. I was living in the constant fear that the hinge would break. It didn’t, it is actually a very sturdy hinge. Anyway, what a perfect excuse for an upgrade eh?

In my search for a new gadget to play with I happened across many clever phones. I did have a look at the iPhone, I must admit. But it isn’t for me. I stayed away from BlackBerry. Developing on them is enough torture! Windows Phone 7 wasn’t even on my radar. Is it on anybody’s? There was only one decision to make really, and that was “which Android phone do I buy?”

Being a HTC fan with my Desire Z, the Sensation was the obvious choice, but I wanted to test the waters with other phones and see what was out there. I read plenty of online reviews, watched YouTube videos, and compared Benchmarks. The list was narrowed down: Samsung Galaxy S2, HTC Sensation, LG Optimus.

The Sensation. Sensational

All three phones sit at the top of the benchmarks. The Samsung Galaxy S2 the most powerful. I was tempted, but I am not a fan of the Samsung UI after previously having some time using the original Galaxy. That and the design are the only two things that took it off my radar. I don’t think it looks like a “cool” phone. The LG, a good phone, but not really proven. They don’t have much of a UI on top of the stock Android in the same way that Samsung has TouchWiz and HTC has Sense. On the Sensation’s front, I enjoyed the additions to my 2.3.3 upgrade for my Desire Z, and heard that the newer version of HTC Sense on the Sensation adds to this. I just had to test it out.

In my opinion, the Sensation is the most professional looking of the three I had narrowed it down to. Except for the back cover, I am not too much of a fan of that. You always see the front though, so I’m not TOO bothered

I managed to bargain Vodafone down to a decent deal for the phone, a

nd so I am now a proud owner. I am happy with my new phone. The screen is a lot bigger – 4.3 inches vs 3.7inches on the Desire Z, it is definitely bigger in the hand. It is thiner and lighter though, and the resolution has been bumped up to 960×540. The UI is fancier and it is quite a clever phone. It is running Android 2.3.4 after upgrading on day 1, and can pack quite a punch! Don’t tell anyone, but it can record in full 1080p

I might do a little app review like when I got my HTC Desire Z for the first time. There is this fantastic app called Crime Map England & Wales that I just have to share with the world!

HTC still live up to their moto of being “quietly brilliant”. Well, if you ignore that HTC Cha Cha… What were they thinking?!

Old Skool BlackBerry!

Geek time, those who are sceptical of this “technology” thing, look away now. I was supposed to post this a while ago, but have only just got round to it.

I have come into trouble getting applications to run on BlackBerry when using a third party library. Resources online for BlackBerry related stuff are quite scarce, so the top with this little post is that I will help at least somebody out! (Probably myself when I re-find this post in a Google search for “Preverifty a 3rd Party jar in BlackBerry”

This is required for all third party libraries, so read up! If you are seeing the error message:

Error starting *project name*. Module ‘jar name’ could not be found.

then this is the solution for you!

It is actually relatively easy to solve, here is how to do it:

Now, I am assuming you are programming in Eclipse, so you want to take your jar you need to preverify, and head to the bin folder of the BlackBerry JDE plugin for Eclipse. This can be found in the Eclipse folder. On my system, the bin folder will be located at:

C:\Eclipse\plugins\net.rim.ejde.componentpack*version you are using here*\components\bin

Now, drop that jar into this folder. (This just makes the whole process easier for those who don’t like dealing with the command line too much.)

Now you want to open that friendly command prompt and cd yourself to that very folder. The command:

“cd C:\Eclipse\plugins\net.rim.ejde.componentpack*version you are using here*\components\bin”

should get you there (If your Eclipse is indeed installed at C:\Eclipse, of course! Now, you want to execute a command to preverify the jar you placed in this folder. Enter this command:

preverify -classpath ”net_rim_api.jar myJarIWantToPreverify.jar

Obviously you want to change the name of the jar to the actual jar you are wanting to preverify. If you get this far and realise you have typed “myJarIWantToPreverify.jar, then please type “exit” in the command prompt, close this internet browser, and shut down the computer. I would advise not turning it on ever again!

This will prompt BlackBerry’s kit to do it’s work.

As if by magic (in fact, it is that technology thing we spoke about earlier), a folder will be created in the directory called “output”. Inside is the very jar you just plonked into the bin folder, but this version has been preverified. Congratulations. You want to drop this into your project and link it into the source, or whatever fancy thing you are planning to do with it. Take it for dinner. Any problems when you run your application should now be solved.

Note: for this to work, you will have to have your java PATH set. You should have that done already though if you are programming for BlackBerry… Shame on you if you don’t!

Hope this has helped somebody out! (ME! )

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